[STEAM] 'This Is a Deeply Odd State of Affairs' — Tech Experts Slam Activision's 'Low Effort' Call of Duty: Black Ops PS5 Port

[Steam 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Activision’s ports of the much-loved Call of Duty: ****** Ops 1 and 2 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 immediately raised eyebrows for their price, but they’ve come under fire for their disappointing graphics performance, too.

The tech experts at

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

have taken a look at the port of the original 2010 ****** Ops to PlayStation, and had a few choice words to say about the work Activision put into it. Chief among their complaints is the fact the ****** Ops port runs at 1080p, not 4K, despite being a 16-year-old game that began life on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Not only that, there’s no anti-aliasing.

DF also criticized the frame-rate, which is limited to 60Hz even on PS5. “A 1080p60 presentation would be potentially acceptable for the PS4 version - and there is one! - but for a brand new PS5 conversion, it's disappointingly poor and well below what the hardware is capable of,” DF said.

“For a native PS5 title and a somewhat high-profile port, this is a deeply odd state of affairs,” DF continued. “Even the game's obvious visual blemishes are preserved: shadow quality was necessarily poor back in the day, but why preserve that problem in the present day when so much more graphics horsepower is available?”

If there’s a silver lining, the PS5 and PS4 versions are better than the one currently accessible on Xbox Series X and S and Xbox One via backwards compatibility, which sticks to the original Xbox 360 resolution of 608p. There are no Xbox enhancements at all.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, which cost $40 each. Both games also offer a separate season pass priced $29.99. So, if you want the complete experience (****** Ops 1 and 2 and all the DLC), you have to pay $140 for games. All this for games that came out over a decade ago.

It’s worth noting that if you are a PlayStation Plus subscriber you get a massive discount. In that case, both games cost $20 each and their season passes are $9 each, which makes for a $58 total if you want everything. This discount runs until August 6.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up